First Branding

Today had an early start around 6:15-6:30. I finished up chores and we went straight into branding preparations. I rounded up the horses and we were saddled up and ready to round up by a little after seven. By this time there were already and extra 25 or so people on the place. While rounding everything up I managed to do nothing stupid...well nothing dumb that anyone else noticed. Although, somehow I managed to practically loose my saddle while riding up a steep (way too steep) draw. So there I was hanging onto my horses neck with the saddle hanging off of his side until we made it to the top. Yep, only I could manage something like that! lol

By the time we had everything loaded up and all of the calves rounded up and sorted off it was time to brand! I watched the gate for the first fifteen minutes or so and then when there came a chance I started with the tail/head. ...and I failed to mention these calves were big...like way bigger than they should have been and there were probably about 150 or so. I never did get the flip quite right to knock 'em down but I can keep 'em pinned pretty well. I found out that I am much better at the rope and back job- I'm assuming it requires less coordination! For anyone who has no idea what I'm talking about: two people wrestle; they rope and drag a calf out and one person grabs the rope and pulls while the other grabs the tail of the calf in order to flip in on it's side, then the person with the tail pins the head and the person with the rope holds the back leg down and out. It's a lot easier to watch than to understand me rambling.

All in all I had a pretty good time and nothing managed to get away from us. I had some trouble at first but eventually I'm sure it will come pretty easy. We have another branding to go to on Wednesday so we'll see how that goes. We used the house I'm living in to cook out of and had lots of good food afterward. The branding was just cool in general because I got to meet a lot of people around here and show them how inexperienced I was with calf wrestling- haha!

I was given the rest of the afternoon off so naturally I am too dumb to go inside and stayed around and helped move and sort some bulls. Later I took Joe out and we went for a ride while the weather was still nice, I also started to weed the six bajillion flower gardens around here (well the used to have flowers in them!) Afterward I came in and ate some pizza and cake again and watched tv online since I still haven't mastered the dumb converter box and tv thing. Anyone know how the heck to do that?

Well have a super night! I get the day off tomorrow! :)